Recommended Posts

Can i just say that one thing that's gonna be important for this game to survive is a good community - regardless of great game mechanics or technical delivery, so I hope people can chill. Its a bit sad even in this thread to see you all hammering at each other. It's only a game, right?

Someone was nice enough to point me to the Shadowbane Emulator site, but I have to say I thought it was pretty grim to read through those forums: Theres a lot of hate going round that for me is kinda game killing. I hope it doesn't spread here. It was enough to keep me from trying out SB to see what the fuss is about. I don't think I'm the only gamer who checks out the community first to see what the fuss is about.

Shadowbane sounds interesting.. but i think a lot of new players who don't know about it (anyone under the age of 20?) are gonna judge CF totally on its own merits... and that starts pretty much with a first impression of the game community. People who are passionate often forget their own volume levels, but noone likes being yelled at. just my 2c.

One of the big problems with a lot of the people that consider themselves primarily shadowbane players is that they want 2.0 and they want the same old names and they don't understand gaming has evolved, and crowfall will evolve with it, so while they try to create their little treehouse club thinking they are somehow entitled to the legacy of crowfall, they need to start realizing this game is going to have gamers from all over, and most likely the best players won't be the biggest shadowbane fans.

VKN's experience =/= to all players experiences. (Perhaps surprisingly, the universe of player experience cannot be extrapolated from just Vikingnail's).

This kind of snark is pointless.

As a stated previously, some players did experience game breaking crashes at launch. To deny that is unreasonable. To deny that for many, the crashes were occasional and not game breaking is likewise unreasonable (and belied by the fact that players did in fact stick around.)

Nope, pretty much everyone experienced, you could see that in any siege... people dropped like flies, people complained about it all over the place, it was a complete crap shoot who would be able to survive crashes at critical moments.

I played from late beta to end cycle of SB. I played day one of launch. I participating in racing to plant one of the first cities on a launch day server. I even chronicled it: http://www.winterblades.net/history

No matter how vociferously Vikingnail continues on his crusade, such hot air needs to be taken in context and viewed with a grain of salt. VKN had a bad experience. His game crashed a lot, it was frustrating and not reasonably playable. He quit. His knowledge base is from that sliver of time played and his opinions stem from his negative experience. He was not the only one.

It's pretty obvious at this point that you are looking at the game with rose-tinted goggles.

There were however some, likely many, and potentially even most, that did not experience said SB.Exe crashes on a game breaking level. Those folks went on to actually experience Shadowbane.

Nope, pretty much everyone dealt with sb.exe. It's pretty disingenuous to pretend that the issue wasn't so widespread that it was one of the main reasons the game lost so many subs.

Edited July 21, 2016 by VIKINGNAIL

Skeggold, Skalmold, Skildir ro Klofnir

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Sigh, I'll probably regret getting involved in this again, but it's bothering me. You seem incapable of separating the concepts how a game is designed and how that design is actually implemented, and I don't understand why.

I think more than likely the issue here is that you are nostalgic about a game and yourself can not separate it.

I'm confused, what is it I can't separate?

Shadowbane had a lot of great things going for it. An amazing character customization system - races, starter runes, base classes, professions, disciplines, stat allocation, skill point allocation, weapon choice. Every single one of these aspects had a noticeable and significant effect on how your character turned out, none of them were superfluous. The city building and sieging system was light years ahead of anything that had come before it and it could be argued that it still hasn't been topped. The emergent political meta game that came from the ability to build and destroy other nations/guilds cities was unlike anything that could be found in other MMO's of the time and to this day is still something that very few MMO's can offer. The constant battle over limited resources such as mines, discipline runes, and even farming and leveling hotspots meant there was always pvp to be had somewhere (even if you didn't want the resources or whatever, you knew some other guild was going to be there guarding it). Throw in a few extra goodies like looting dead players, no theme-park questing hogwash, open pvp pretty much everywhere in the entire game world, and probably a host of other cool poorly made socks I've since forgotten.

Shadowbane had a lot of great ideas going for it. Those ideas never truly came to fruition because the game was unplayable.

Cool, we agree, Shadowbane had great ideas. We'll come back to the whole 'game was unplayable' thing later.

Now for all of the stuff that Shadowbane did right, it did a whole lot of poorly made socks terribly, terribly wrong as well. The game was rushed to release way too early. The servers couldn't handle the amount of total players, and certainly couldn't handle the amount of concurrent players that would frequently gather in the same location. I strongly suspect this wasn't just a lack of server capacity, but also poor netcode and server-client architecture. As a result the game was insanely laggy, rubber-banding all across the map was just a fact of life, pvp and even pve was nearly impossible a lot of the time. Bugs and glitches were everywhere - constant crashes, getting stuck in terrain or buildings, items disappearing, mobs appearing to be in one location while they were actually somewhere else, your character appearing in one location while actually being somewhere else (and all of the myriad targeting problems that came along with that), broken skills, broken NPC's, exploitable code that allowed players to cheat in various ways, and again probably a host of other broken poorly made socks I've since forgotten.

Correct, and near the end of beta the game didn't have a lot of these issues but for whatever reason launch version was exponentially worse.

I don't have an answer for what changed between end of beta and launch, but I'm also not sure what your point is. Is this supposed to mean something to me? Does it support your position in any way? What does this have to do with anything I said?

Now I want you to pause for a moment and try to understand the fundamental difference between these lists. The first paragraph is all things that fall in the design category - they are systems and concepts that were developed through the vision and ideas that the development team had for the game. The second paragraph, where poorly made socks went terribly wrong, are all failures in the implementation of the game - rushed deadlines, poor planning, bad code, lack of bug testing and general QA.

I want you to understand that anyone can have great ideas, whether they can implement them is what matters.

I agree, but again I don't understand what your point is. How is this statement relevant to anything I said? Are you implying that the Crowfall team is going to fail the same way the Shadowbane team did? Do you think they are more or less likely to fail if they try to create a spiritual successor to Shadowbane as opposed to some other MMO? Give me something to work with here man!

People who love(d) Shadowbane aren't blinded by nostalgia (well, not all of them at least). They haven't forgotten how broken the game was at launch (though some may not have been around for it) or how long it took to fix (and some of the issues were literally never fixed, right up to the day the servers went down). Shadowbane was a deeply flawed game. The players know it, the developers knew it, Todd knows it. But the vast majority of it's problems, the primary reasons why it flamed out and died so quickly, were technical issues related to its implementation. And while that knowledge was of no use to Shadowbane while it was flailing about trying to stave off a premature death, it's great for us now because we know that those technical problems do not have to be repeated. It's entirely possible to build a spiritual successor to Shadowbane that isn't plagued by rampant bugs, glitches, crashes, and exploits.

No they really are for the most part. Many of them didn't even play at launch, so they don't even know what the game was like when it was most populated and most competitive. They played in a small pond and are nostalgic of those small pond battles thinking the game captured something truly great. They generally also were unable to move on to find success in bigger ponds so they can't really relate to big pond experiences.

Okay so remember when I said we would come back to the whole 'game was unplayable' thing? You claim here that the game was at its most populated and most competitive right after launch. And yet you claimed earlier that Shadowbanes great ideas never came to fruition because the game was unplayable. Since the game was in its least playable state right after launch, and got progressively more playable over time, I'm kind of confused. The game cannot be at its most competitive at the same time that the game is unplayable. Get your poorly made socks straight.

You say they are nostalgic, I say they aren't. Certainly there are some in both camps, neither of us really knows where the majority is. It's irrelevant frankly, because the point I was making here is that the fact that Shadowbane was riddled with bugs and technical problems is completely irrelevant to Crowfall. How clever of you to completely ignore that.

The rest of what you said... ugh, I just... I don't even... Seriously, what the custard is your point? What does it matter who played at launch and who didn't? You can't even figure out whether you think launch was playable or unplayable across the span of writing out just one post. People who didn't play at launch know absolutely nothing about Shadowbane? Show me some proof that there is absolutely nothing of value that anyone could have possibly gained if they only played Shadowbane from 2004 and onward. Go on, lets see all the data you collected. I'll also be waiting for the data on how everyone who started playing Shadowbane after 2004 never managed to be successful in any other MMO in the last 12 years. Thanks!

I'm not blind to Shadowbanes non-technical failures either. The server system was doomed to fail from the start with no pre-planned way to end a server, which resulted in server death by stagnation over time (and was another big reason why Shadowbane struggled to retain players, as many got bored and quit long before server resets ever happened). Balance issues plagued the game for a long time. Poorly thought out class and skill design lead to rampant botting of support classes like bards and priests. Crafting was essentially non-existent for most of the player base. Etc, etc.

You may be able to talk about shadowbane's technical failures but do you truly understand that the game was literally a joke because of it?

I don't get it. A joke in what way? Because it was one of the worst launches in MMO history? I guess. Yet again I'm going to have to ask you - what the hell does this have to do with anything I have said?

Hey guess what - these can be fixed too! We're building a whole new game from the ground up here!

Now this is very important, so pay close attention and really let it sink in. It is possible for someone to want Crowfall to build on [some/most/all] of the great design concepts from Shadowbane, while simultaneously wanting Crowfall to avoid the bad design concepts and myriad mistakes made during the implementation of Shadowbane.

Now this is very important, so pay close attention and really let it sink in. Those that played shadowbane when it was relevant know what is good and bad about the game, those that played it when it was a small pond after most of the players had left are grasping at nostalgia and aren't objective about what the game was. So even if JTC says that crowfall borrows heavily from shadowbane, he means it borrows from the shadowbane that he was a part of, not the shadowbane people experienced later on.

Jesus, would you respond to what I've actually written please? Do you agree or disagree that it is possible for someone to want Crowfall to incorporate the good things that Shadowbane did, and also want Crowfall to avoid the mistakes that Shadowbane made? That is what I wrote, respond please.

As for what you said, once again, what is your point? Shadowbane is Shadowbane. Whether its something from beta, or launch, or post-ROC, it was all part of Shadowbane. If someone wants it incorporated into Crowfall, then go ahead and let them plead their case. It's up to the ACE development team to decide if it fits into Crowfall. Did you know that Crowfall is also pulling inspiration from multiple other MMO's? Crazy right. I mean how could any of that end up in Crowfall if it's not part of Todd's original vision for Shadowbane from 14 years ago? Stop being stupid, it's becoming tiresome.

Is it sinking in yet? Can you wrap your brain around such a complex idea? Now tell me again, how is it that I'm just a nostalgia blinded sucker who only wants Shadowbane 2.0 because I've forgotten all about how broken the game was?

Is it sinking in yet? Can you wrap your brain around such a really simple and obvious concept? Well let me ask you this? How long did you play shadowbane, did you dominate it early on? Did you even play beta? Do you know what made it great? Do you know why it was a joke in the late era?

None of this is in any way relevant to what I've been talking about. Why do keep doing this?

I did not play beta. I played at launch, did not last long as I could not deal with the game breaking bugs (and I had really poorly made socksty internet, which made the lag even worse for me than most people). I came back a few months later, played on and off until it closed down. I was logged in on the day the servers shut down for good. I did not dominate early. I know what made Shadowbane great, I already talked about most of it. You'll have to fill me in on your little joke.

Let's switch gears a bit and go back to your first post again. Are you starting to understand why, when someone (the OP) asks "what Shadowbane was like and why so many people want Crowfall to be like Shadowbane", bringing up the fact that the game was a buggy mess is absolutely irrelevant? The OP doesn't care, that doesn't tell him anything about why people want this game to be like Shadowbane. The only way it could possibly be relevant information for the OP is if you are trying to suggest to him that the real intention of the people on these forums who are lobbying to make this game more like Shadowbane is that they are trying to turn Crowfall into a buggy mess also.

Nope it isn't irrelevant, because the OP needs to understand the context of who might answer those questions, why they might answer the way they will, and what shadowbane actually was.

And yet you did none of that. You literally gave no information except that it was a buggy game that died out quickly. How did that give context to about who was answering his questions? How did that give insight into why anyone would answer in any particular way? How did that explain in any way what Shadowbane as a game was like? Let me help you out - it didn't. You know why? Because it can't. It doesn't answer his question at all, it provides no context to anything. It was useless in every sense of the word. Try again please.

If that is actually what you were trying to relay to the OP, it's one of the most absurd things I've ever heard, and I stand by my previous assessment that you are indeed stupid. If that isn't what you were trying to say, then due to the previously established fact that information about how buggy the game was is completely useless to the OP, I can only conclude that you said it either as an underhanded attempt to lower the OPs opinion of Shadowbane with irrelevant information (which is stupid), that you didn't even realize that the information was completely useless (also stupid). Or maybe you just like to throw insults at Shadowbane because you get some weird enjoyment from it or to intentionally annoy other posters on this forum, which I'm sorry to say, is also very stupid.

You can sit here and call me stupid, but your arguments are weak, and ad hominems are boring. I don't enjoy insulting shadowbane, I just don't like the misinformation people spread about how great it was. If people want to see a functional version of shadowbane they can go play on an emulator, those versions are pretty stable, and even they are a joke. Then they can go ahead and imagine the game crashing every 10 minutes at launch and even more frequently in crowded areas. Then you can talk about what a great game shadowbane was.

Chill out man, I was just having a bit of fun since you are so god damn tedious to argue with. You have attempted to dodge almost everything I said, not responding directly to any of it and instead writing out a bunch of completely unrelated gibberish. You have failed to make a single valid point or refute anything I said. Well done.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

VKN's experience =/= to all players experiences. (Perhaps surprisingly, the universe of player experience cannot be extrapolated from just Vikingnail's).

This kind of snark is pointless.

Humor and sarcasm are the perfect answer to the bluster of the belligerent, biased, and baseless.

No matter how vociferously Vikingnail continues on his crusade, such hot air needs to be taken in context and viewed with a grain of salt. VKN had a bad experience. His game crashed a lot, it was frustrating and not reasonably playable. He quit. His knowledge base is from that sliver of time played and his opinions stem from his negative experience. He was not the only one.

It's pretty obvious at this point that you are looking at the game with rose-tinted goggles.

It's pretty disingenuous to pretend that the issue wasn't so widespread that it was one of the main reasons the game lost so many subs.

Readers will note that unlike VKN, I do not make categorical denials or baseless assertions. In fact, I admitted that some folks did encounter gamebreaking crashes. I validate some of VKN's argument. The key difference being VKN's bias and agenda permeates his every post; he is almost a caricature.

Reasonable people can differ on opinions and still admit portions of a contrary argument. A strong position is not undermined but such admissions.

Its important to take everything in context, including VKN's brief and negative experience with Shadowbane.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Shadowbane did eat its own. Dealing with real loss was not something MMO players had ever experienced on such scale. This DID cause a massive loss in population. Its something that resetting CWs and EKs are designed to fix.

Anyone who left in the first months of Shadowbane also has no clue what they are talking about. Its like saying "I played EVE at launch in 2003, before there was player sovereignty and then quit, and let me tell you that game sucked!"

That's what caused population decline on every server SB ever launched.

Which JTC specifically designed for in CF. No it's not SB2. He learned from SB and will hopefully improve on it. The grand vision is very similar, however.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Can i just say that one thing that's gonna be important for this game to survive is a good community - regardless of great game mechanics or technical delivery, so I hope people can chill. Its a bit sad even in this thread to see you all hammering at each other. It's only a game, right?

Someone was nice enough to point me to the Shadowbane Emulator site, but I have to say I thought it was pretty grim to read through those forums: Theres a lot of hate going round that for me is kinda game killing. I hope it doesn't spread here. It was enough to keep me from trying out SB to see what the fuss is about. I don't think I'm the only gamer who checks out the community first to see what the fuss is about.

Shadowbane sounds interesting.. but i think a lot of new players who don't know about it (anyone under the age of 20?) are gonna judge CF totally on its own merits... and that starts pretty much with a first impression of the game community. People who are passionate often forget their own volume levels, but noone likes being yelled at. just my 2c.

PvPers have the tendency to keep on PVPing on the forums, not much to be done about it. These forums are actually pretty friendly by comparison with a few others I frequented ^^

Just use all the salt going around to salt your popcorn and enjoy the fireworks

Nope my goggles are pretty realistic, great ideas, poor implementation... pretty much the same opinion of every sb player that played the game and excelled early and then realized the bugs and poor optimization and skill-ceiling weren't worth continued time investment.

Readers will note that unlike VKN, I do not make categorical denials or baseless assertions. In fact, I admitted that some folks did encounter gamebreaking crashes. I validate some of VKN's argument. The key difference being VKN's bias and agenda permeates his every post; he is almost a caricature.

Again, rose-tinted goggles... It wasn't "some" folks, it was all folks. You are trying to downplay the issue because again, you see the game with fond nostalgia clouding what was actually going on with it. It's actually quite ridiculous, the notion that you think SB was eating its own and that's why it lost so many players. It lost so many players because it crashed constantly, was poorly optimized, and the entire service got hacked. This is beyond contestation no matter how much wishful thinking you want to invest.

Reasonable people can differ on opinions and still admit portions of a contrary argument. A strong position is not undermined but such admissions.

Its important to take everything in context, including VKN's brief and negative experience with Shadowbane.

There's actually a lot of context to your post too, but it wouldn't be polite to mention, but basically biases are boring and you aren't really remembering shadowbane how it actually was.

Edited July 21, 2016 by VIKINGNAIL

Skeggold, Skalmold, Skildir ro Klofnir

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Can i just say that one thing that's gonna be important for this game to survive is a good community - regardless of great game mechanics or technical delivery, so I hope people can chill. Its a bit sad even in this thread to see you all hammering at each other. It's only a game, right?

Someone was nice enough to point me to the Shadowbane Emulator site, but I have to say I thought it was pretty grim to read through those forums: Theres a lot of hate going round that for me is kinda game killing. I hope it doesn't spread here. It was enough to keep me from trying out SB to see what the fuss is about. I don't think I'm the only gamer who checks out the community first to see what the fuss is about.

Shadowbane sounds interesting.. but i think a lot of new players who don't know about it (anyone under the age of 20?) are gonna judge CF totally on its own merits... and that starts pretty much with a first impression of the game community. People who are passionate often forget their own volume levels, but noone likes being yelled at. just my 2c.

Yeah I think you'll find this is actually pretty tame compared to some game community's. When the game goes live the forum PvP will only escalate, so if you think its too much now might suggest avoiding them once start playing the game. If one is turned off the game by the forum community before actually trying the game itself then honestly that person wasn't very interested in the game to begin with, IMO. But true if one doesn't like the forum community then likely then won't fit in with the game community either, but again I haven't seen anything here yet that would indicate a level of toxicity that would be a detriment to the game. A few bad apples here and there perhaps like every community so shouldn't judge the whole community on a loud few.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Yeah I think you'll find this is actually pretty tame compared to some game community's. When the game goes live the forum PvP will only escalate, so if you think its too much now might suggest avoiding them once start playing the game. If one is turned off the game by the forum community before actually trying the game itself then honestly that person wasn't very interested in the game to begin with, IMO. But true if one doesn't like the forum community then likely then won't fit in with the game community either, but again I haven't seen anything here yet that would indicate a level of toxicity that would be a detriment to the game. A few bad apples here and there perhaps like every community so shouldn't judge the whole community on a loud few.

There is also the possibility that the forums will be a lot tamer when the game launches because people can just dominate each other in game.

At that point it doesn't really matter what 99% of the players say as the results will speak louder than anything. And in the modern era of pvp where you can record video footage of everything people have very little wiggle room to pretend they are something that they are not.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

At that point it doesn't really matter what 99% of the players say as the results will speak louder than anything. And in the modern era of pvp where you can record video footage of everything people have very little wiggle room to pretend they are something that they are not.

Really? You don't seem like the type to let silly things like facts, logic, or irrefutable evidence get in your way.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Yeah I think you'll find this is actually pretty tame compared to some game community's. When the game goes live the forum PvP will only escalate, so if you think its too much now might suggest avoiding them once start playing the game. If one is turned off the game by the forum community before actually trying the game itself then honestly that person wasn't very interested in the game to begin with, IMO. But true if one doesn't like the forum community then likely then won't fit in with the game community either, but again I haven't seen anything here yet that would indicate a level of toxicity that would be a detriment to the game. A few bad apples here and there perhaps like every community so shouldn't judge the whole community on a loud few.

Yeah I think tbh I think forum wars and the salt that goes with it is fun to see - so long as it doesn't turn too toxic and personal. AA forums were fun to read: Watching the big guilds swipe each other... BDO as well.

But when it turns into raw posturing it just gets silly.. Like watching small boys compare fire-hoses.

mine is bigger

no mine

no mine

no mine shuddup

you shuddup

no you.

They're all weeny guys

This thread has a wee bit of that firehose stuff tbh.. which I guess is deliberate - but I kind of agree with Vikingnail.. once the actual real fighting starts people will find out who is just mouth versus deeds..

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

"Survive and Adapt" is more relevant, and is founded on the idea of NEVER "getting used" to anything.

You look beyond for what might be better.

Thus the benefit to The Dialog in the Think Tank. Asking questions and thinking outside The Box with others.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Bramble

“Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it." - Seth Godin

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Trigglypuff, why do you think a Shadowbane 2.0 wouldn't be modernized? The only real threat to modern gaming would be them staying with tab targeting which would be unlikely unless us geriatrics were the only ones to still buy it. Camelot Unchained is still tab target?

Not that shadowbane 2.0 would ever be similar. The chinese own it and it's going to get the culture slap.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Trigglypuff, why do you think a Shadowbane 2.0 wouldn't be modernized? The only real threat to modern gaming would be them staying with tab targeting which would be unlikely unless us geriatrics were the only ones to still buy it. Camelot Unchained is still tab target?

Not that shadowbane 2.0 would ever be similar. The chinese own it and it's going to get the culture slap.

DAoC had a much larger population than Shadowbane, and also at the time of CU's kickstarter crowfall was not a thing, so it isn't really surprising that it was able to fund being a new spin on some old ideas. But had crowfall been tab-target it would not have funded post CU existence.

Shadowbane 1.0 didn't work, shadowbane 2.0 wouldn't work because pvpers these days are much more skilled than they ever were before (you can look at professional gaming to see this) and there would be no point in making a low skill-ceiling pvp game. I mean CU can probably stay alive post-launch, and crowfall could cater to a lower skill-ceiling crowd and probably stay afloat, but seriously what respectable pvper would be content playing a game with a low skill-ceiling when there are gamers out there doing much more crazy stuff. No competitive pvper would be cool with that.

Which is why I think it is important for modern top tier gamers to help shape what crowfall will be, because it seems like a lot of less-skilled gamers like creating small ponds and telling themselves that what they are doing in their small pond is comparable to what a professional pvper does. It's important in a truly gritty pvp game that the reality chick is administered.